Inspired by Avengers: Endgame, the 182-minute grand finale of the Marvel cinematic saga, I crunched some numbers and examined how blockbusters—especially ones not encumbered by Endgame’s hefty narrative obligations, with so many characters and storylines to pay off—are expanding at a much faster rate than is the human lifespan. I am solely responsible for the math in the piece, and the jokes.

My review of Ron Perlman‘s autobiography Easy Street (The Hard Way) is in the Arts/Style section of this Sunday’s Washington Post. But you can read it now.

Perlman’s frequent deployment of the phrase, “Any muthafucka but this muthafucka!” really endeared him to me. I’ve always liked him as an actor, though. I watched Beauty and the Beast when I was a kid because I had a crush on Linda Hamilton stemming from The Terminator.

Theater J’s new production of Arthur Miller‘s What? No, it’s not about me; you’re an imaginationless churl merely to suggest it play After the Fall is a staggering work of heartbreaking genius. I reviewed it in today’s Washington City Paper, along with Studio Theater’s busy U.S. premiere of Roland Schimmelpfennig‘s The Golden Dragon, which does Rorschach’s After the Quake, which I liked, one better in the the opaque-animal-metaphor interpretation derby.